Senate GOP mum on House CR plan

When it comes to Senate Republicans’ thoughts on the House plan to pass a short-term spending bill defunding Obamacare, mum’s the word.

GOP Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Ted Cruz (Texas) — who have loudly been calling for defunding the health care law — quickly praised House Speaker John Boehner for crafting a bill that strips funding from the much-reviled Affordable Care Act. So too did Senate Minority Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who “supports the House effort,” said spokesman Don Stewart.

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But after GOP senators huddled for an afternoon strategy meeting in reaction to the House’s plan, most rank-and-file members opted to stay quiet until the House actually passes its proposal. And that’s still an open question — the House is expected to vote on the continuing resolution with the Obamacare language on either Thursday or Friday.

“I’m going to be real cautious in not saying anything that’s going to be quoted to make it look like I’m dissatisfied or happy,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

“I don’t know. We need to look at it,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)

Senators’ caution about armchair quarterbacking the House strategy is understandable. After Lee circulated a letter this summer vowing oppose any spending bill that funded Obamacare, fellow Senate Republicans panned Lee and supporters like Inhofe and Paul as backing the “dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of,” as Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) put it. Democrats are even keeping a running tally of those critiques.

But now that the House may embody Lee’s letter as legislation, those criticisms have stopped.

“We’ll see what they send over,” Burr said Wednesday as he hopped in an elevator with Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), both of whom declined to offer a word of comment.

It’s no state secret that the House bill is doomed in the Senate. Only 14 senators explicitly back the strategy to defund Obamacare in spending bills, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) may choose to write his own spending bill or strip out the Obamacare language in what the House sends over.

“The tea party guys can kick and scream all they want to, but either the House eventually passes a clean CR with no [Obamacare] defunding or the government shuts down,” said a Democratic leadership aide.

If Senate conservatives have a gameplan to fight Reid, they aren’t saying. There have been whispers of a conservative filibuster of a clean CR, for example. But for now, Senate Republicans will wait and see if the House can really pass its spending bill this week — and then see what Reid does.

“The House has got to figure out how to get to 218 and that’s where it starts. And we’ll react and play our hand when that time comes. They’ve got the majority so they’ve got the responsibility to govern and figure out how to get this done,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 3 in Senate GOP leadership and a backer of the Lee letter.

Boehner said Wednesday that he intends to send over a CR to the Senate that chokes off funding for Obamacare to the Senate, where his “conservative allies over there can continue the fight.”

Cruz recognizes that fight is near impossible one to win and is calling for a conservative “grassroots tsunami” to give him and Lee support in urging senators to join them. And if they lose in the Senate, Cruz expects Boehner to have his back if the fight shifts back to the House.

“Harry Reid will no doubt try to strip the defund language from the continuing resolution, and right now he likely has the votes to do so. At that point, House Republicans must stand firm, hold their ground, and continue to listen to the American people,” Cruz said.